Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

You want to start out strong as a writer and succeed at your work. A lot of different strengths are at play to keep us at the keyboard or page, and the good news is—you may already have some of these strengths. If not, you can develop them over time. And some of them may surprise you. Let's look at five strengths you need to succeed as a writer: Today I'm trying something new, sharing this both in audio and video format. Let's hear from you: After you watch or listen, let me know in the comments what you see as your greatest writing strength—and if I've left off a critical writing strength, add to this list! Look, you can subscribe for free coaching!

You want to start out strong as a writer and succeed at your work. A lot of different strengths are at play to keep us at the keyboard or page, and the good news is—you may already have some of these strengths. If not, you can develop them over time. And some of them may surprise you. Let's look at five strengths you need to succeed as a writer: Today I'm trying something new, sharing this both in audio and video format. Let's hear from you: After you watch or listen, let me know in the comments what you see as your greatest writing strength—and if I've left off a critical writing strength, add to this list! Look, you can subscribe for free coaching!

[Ep 228] You have an idea for your next writing project. That's great! Before you get too far—before you write too much—you need to be sure this idea is going to fly with your audience. You need to validate it so you move forward with a concept that, depending on your purpose, will truly resonate, connect, teach, persuade, inform, or entertain. Let's look at three ways to validate project ideas: Validate “in house”: run it through personal filtersValidate through research: check what exists alreadyValidate through audience: ask, survey, and test the idea Validate “In House” The first method to validate is to run it through personal filters. Ask yourself if it fits with your brand, if it will serve your audience, and if it’s a fresh angle on your primary topics. This may take only a minute or two, but sometimes we rush past it in our excitement over an idea that captivates us. If we skip this step, we may create content that draws an audience uninterested in anything else we write. If I as a writing coach started producing content about style because I'm interested in a trend, I might click publish on an article about fall colors that draws a new audience of women who like to discuss shirts, skirts, and shoes. But if I pause and validate “in house,” asking myself if this is a good fit for my primary purpose and audience, I’ll probably focus my energy elsewhere. After all, I’m creating a place online for men and women looking for support with their writing, so devoting a long post to discussing red pumps and French braids won't reach or retain a wide range of writers. But let’s say it passes this initial “in house” test. You believe your idea will serve your audience well and you haven't explored this topic at length in the past. The next step is to do some research—see what else is out there on this topic. Validate Through Research The main way to research is, of course, to type keywords, key phrases, key ideas, and key concepts related to your project’s idea into a search engine and see what it pulls up. I suggest you quickly jot down everything you know about this idea before the search. Then you can compare all the articles, videos, podcasts, and memes with your existing knowledge and slant. Don’t be discouraged if you find a ton of material—don’t assume it’s all been said before. In fact, that’s a good sign that people are searching for this kind of content. You'll see how to contribute to the greater conversation. And that’s the key. As you explore what other authors, bloggers, and speakers in your niche have created, you realize how your project will be similar, but different, and broaden or deepen readers' understanding. If need be, return to 6 methods to right-size your next writing project to find a different slant. You can continue to work through those until you land on that distinct spin you can bring to this project. Pro tip: As you’re cruising the internet and clicking through to interesting content, be sure to grab all citation information while you’re there. Because if you decide to quote an expert in the field or to include an excerpt from one of the articles, you want that citation information at your fingertips. Quoting people builds credibility—and so does proper citation. We told our high school debaters it's always good to bring an expert to the podium with you to raise your credibility. I think it’s the same with writers—when we cite other sources, we bring a level of integrity and credibility to our work. Search engines give you a broad look at what’s existing on this topic, but you can conduct a more academic search, as well. Libraries will give you access to journals and publications to find peer-reviewed studies. Also, you’ll be able to search countless newspapers and magazines. Just go online to your library’s portal and find out what’s available to you. I’d like to highlight a few specific websites where you can focus...

[Ep 228] You have an idea for your next writing project. That's great! Before you get too far—before you write too much—you need to be sure this idea is going to fly with your audience. You need to validate it so you move forward with a concept that, depending on your purpose, will truly resonate, connect, teach, persuade, inform, or entertain. Let's look at three ways to validate project ideas: Validate “in house”: run it through personal filtersValidate through research: check what exists alreadyValidate through audience: ask, survey, and test the idea Validate “In House” The first method to validate is to run it through personal filters. Ask yourself if it fits with your brand, if it will serve your audience, and if it’s a fresh angle on your primary topics. This may take only a minute or two, but sometimes we rush past it in our excitement over an idea that captivates us. If we skip this step, we may create content that draws an audience uninterested in anything else we write. If I as a writing coach started producing content about style because I'm interested in a trend, I might click publish on an article about fall colors that draws a new audience of women who like to discuss shirts, skirts, and shoes. But if I pause and validate “in house,” asking myself if this is a good fit for my primary purpose and audience, I’ll probably focus my energy elsewhere. After all, I’m creating a place online for men and women looking for support with their writing, so devoting a long post to discussing red pumps and French braids won't reach or retain a wide range of writers. But let’s say it passes this initial “in house” test. You believe your idea will serve your audience well and you haven't explored this topic at length in the past. The next step is to do some research—see what else is out there on this topic. Validate Through Research The main way to research is, of course, to type keywords, key phrases, key ideas, and key concepts related to your project’s idea into a search engine and see what it pulls up. I suggest you quickly jot down everything you know about this idea before the search. Then you can compare all the articles, videos, podcasts, and memes with your existing knowledge and slant. Don’t be discouraged if you find a ton of material—don’t assume it’s all been said before. In fact, that’s a good sign that people are searching for this kind of content. You'll see how to contribute to the greater conversation. And that’s the key. As you explore what other authors, bloggers, and speakers in your niche have created, you realize how your project will be similar, but different, and broaden or deepen readers' understanding. If need be, return to 6 methods to right-size your next writing project to find a different slant. You can continue to work through those until you land on that distinct spin you can bring to this project. Pro tip: As you’re cruising the internet and clicking through to interesting content, be sure to grab all citation information while you’re there. Because if you decide to quote an expert in the field or to include an excerpt from one of the articles, you want that citation information at your fingertips. Quoting people builds credibility—and so does proper citation. We told our high school debaters it's always good to bring an expert to the podium with you to raise your credibility. I think it’s the same with writers—when we cite other sources, we bring a level of integrity and credibility to our work. Search engines give you a broad look at what’s existing on this topic, but you can conduct a more academic search, as well. Libraries will give you access to journals and publications to find peer-reviewed studies. Also, you’ll be able to search countless newspapers and magazines. Just go online to your library’s portal and find out what’s available to you. I’d like to highlight a few specific websites where you can focus...

[Ep 227] Have you ever written a blog post and found it's growing too big and unwieldy? Or you set out to develop a book only to realize you don't have enough material to fill a 45K- or 50K-word manuscript? If so, you're struggling with Goldilocks Syndrome: your idea is too big or too small for the project’s purpose and the way it’ll be published or shared with the world. You’re trying to cram everything you know about, say, computers into 800 to 1,000 words. You’ve got the makings of a book when you set out to write a blog post. How do you narrow it to a reasonable length? Or you’re trying to stretch the idea of cooking with crackers into a book-length project, but it’s not enough material. How do you broaden the concept to produce a compelling cookbook? What does it take to land on that just right length for your next writing project? The 6 Right-Sizing Methods Test these six methods for narrowing—or broadening—your next writing idea and you’ll land on the perfect length, approach, and slant to suit this project’s audience, purpose, and medium. In the process, you’ll gain clarity and solidify your ideas. The six different methods to right-size your projects are: TimeLocationCategoriesAudienceIssueStructure Let me describe each one, starting with time. When does it mean to right-size your project using time? 1. Time You can use time to focus on decades, a stage of life, or an era. For example, depending on your topic, you might limit your idea to focus only on the 1950s, only early childhood, or only on the Middle Ages. If you’re writing a memoir, you’ll limit the scope of your book to a specific time in your life in which you experienced struggle and transformation. If you’re writing about plants, you could focus on the planting stage. If you need to broaden your idea because it’s too narrow, you can simply expand from the 1950s to the first half of the 20th century or from early childhood to Kindergarten through sixth grade. 2. Location Location is another way to land on the right size for your project. You could focus on geography, meaning anything from a continent or country all the way down to a city landmark, neighborhood, or business. But you could think of location on an object or a space. The gardener may want to write about an area of the garden or the location on a specific plant, such as the roots or petals. If you’re writing about flight, you could focus on small airports in a given state or areas within a specific airport. 3. Categories We can also use categories to think through an idea we find to be too big and broad or too small and narrow. Find some commonalities and group those things that are similar. If you’re the garden blogger, you could focus on one category—vegetables—instead of flowers, trees, or groundcover. Dial down even more by categorizing nightshades or spring vegetables or weeds. The blogger who writes about planes can narrow to categories such as biplanes, jets, or airliners. By focusing on a small category, you easily narrow your idea. And then you can broaden by including multiple categories. 4. Audience First-time authors often want to write a book for everyone in the whole world. That’s not realistic. The first step in right-sizing will be to narrow your audience. For a specific project, you could narrow even further, selecting a sub-group within your target audience. Maybe you write for parents, so to narrow the topic you outline an idea for parents of preschoolers or parents of teens. So you can use a subgroup of your broader group to narrow. Including more types of people in your audience will broaden the idea and inform how you write it. 5. Issue Many topics have issues baked into them: gun control, parenting philosophies, technology use. Writers may take one side or another on these topics to automatically right-size their idea. Addressing only one issue related to their ide...

[Ep 227] Have you ever written a blog post and found it's growing too big and unwieldy? Or you set out to develop a book only to realize you don't have enough material to fill a 45K- or 50K-word manuscript? If so, you're struggling with Goldilocks Syndrome: your idea is too big or too small for the project’s purpose and the way it’ll be published or shared with the world. You’re trying to cram everything you know about, say, computers into 800 to 1,000 words. You’ve got the makings of a book when you set out to write a blog post. How do you narrow it to a reasonable length? Or you’re trying to stretch the idea of cooking with crackers into a book-length project, but it’s not enough material. How do you broaden the concept to produce a compelling cookbook? What does it take to land on that just right length for your next writing project? The 6 Right-Sizing Methods Test these six methods for narrowing—or broadening—your next writing idea and you’ll land on the perfect length, approach, and slant to suit this project’s audience, purpose, and medium. In the process, you’ll gain clarity and solidify your ideas. The six different methods to right-size your projects are: TimeLocationCategoriesAudienceIssueStructure Let me describe each one, starting with time. When does it mean to right-size your project using time? 1. Time You can use time to focus on decades, a stage of life, or an era. For example, depending on your topic, you might limit your idea to focus only on the 1950s, only early childhood, or only on the Middle Ages. If you’re writing a memoir, you’ll limit the scope of your book to a specific time in your life in which you experienced struggle and transformation. If you’re writing about plants, you could focus on the planting stage. If you need to broaden your idea because it’s too narrow, you can simply expand from the 1950s to the first half of the 20th century or from early childhood to Kindergarten through sixth grade. 2. Location Location is another way to land on the right size for your project. You could focus on geography, meaning anything from a continent or country all the way down to a city landmark, neighborhood, or business. But you could think of location on an object or a space. The gardener may want to write about an area of the garden or the location on a specific plant, such as the roots or petals. If you’re writing about flight, you could focus on small airports in a given state or areas within a specific airport. 3. Categories We can also use categories to think through an idea we find to be too big and broad or too small and narrow. Find some commonalities and group those things that are similar. If you’re the garden blogger, you could focus on one category—vegetables—instead of flowers, trees, or groundcover. Dial down even more by categorizing nightshades or spring vegetables or weeds. The blogger who writes about planes can narrow to categories such as biplanes, jets, or airliners. By focusing on a small category, you easily narrow your idea. And then you can broaden by including multiple categories. 4. Audience First-time authors often want to write a book for everyone in the whole world. That’s not realistic. The first step in right-sizing will be to narrow your audience. For a specific project, you could narrow even further, selecting a sub-group within your target audience. Maybe you write for parents, so to narrow the topic you outline an idea for parents of preschoolers or parents of teens. So you can use a subgroup of your broader group to narrow. Including more types of people in your audience will broaden the idea and inform how you write it. 5. Issue Many topics have issues baked into them: gun control, parenting philosophies, technology use. Writers may take one side or another on these topics to automatically right-size their idea. Addressing only one issue related to their ide...

[Ep 226] With my Back to Basics series, I'm providing tools you can apply to your next project in hopes it will make the writing process easier and the final product stronger than ever—so you can make an impact. Last time, we started by identifying a project's high-level elements—its Topic, Audience, Purpose, and Medium. After that, you can focus on the message of your project; that is, given your topic, what is this project’s IDEA. What do you write about​?Is itrunning, longevity, RV travel, cooking on a budget, stamp collecting, or social justice? Maybe you’re known for this topic and it’s your brand identity, or maybe you’ve been assigned this by an editor. Regardless, you start with a topic, but you don’t stop there. You have to hone in on an idea: a narrowed idea suitable for this particular project and this particular audience. Your finalized idea will reflect the slant or angle you’re taking that will provide focus and set your project apart from others tackling the same topic. It’s tempting to latch onto the first idea that pops into our heads—and sometimes those are indeed fresh and full of potential. Most of the time, though, if we want to write something that stands out, we’re better off taking time to send the idea through five phases: GenerateNarrowValidateRevise (adapt, adjust)Confirm or Finalize 1. Generate First, you’ll generate ideas. You’re about to hear lots of tips for generating ideas in this episode, and I’ll include links to a few other articles and resources. You can test them out and find what works best for you. 2. Narrow When you land on some ideas with potential, you’ll narrow them to suit your audience, purpose, and medium. You’ll also find your unique slant. 3. Validate When it seems your idea has potential, you’ll validate the idea, especially if you’re launching a big project like a book. But even when you’re planning an article or blog post, it’s smart to take a few steps to vet the idea, and I’ll explain that in another episode. 4. Revise After that process, you’ll adapt it based on the input you receive during the validation phase, revising and adjusting the idea as needed. 5. Confirm or Finalize The last phase will be to confirm your idea and finalize it so you can dig in and—finally!—write. A five-phase process just to lock in an idea may sound like overkill and it may seem like it’ll take ages, but you’ll breeze through it—especially for short projects. And it’s definitely worth it for longer projects because they’ll come together more efficiently when you walk through these phases. Let’s start with what it takes to generate ideas. Generate Ideas to Find What You Have to Say When we begin our search for writing ideas, we start with ourselves. What are you drawing from to produce your projects? What’s in you? What do you have to say? Generate Ideas by Remembering Our writing usually flows out of the person we are. The ideas we share are ideas inside us, so writing about our past and drawing from memories, we can pull up ideas that formed us, challenged us, confused us. Using those memories as the centerpiece of a project, we can dive in to explore the meaning, the truth, the lies, and the message locked in our past. These ideas flow from the richness of remembering. Generate Ideas by Living We continue to add to our memories by increasing experiences. So another way to generate ideas is by living. The stories we tell, if nonfiction, are experiences we’ve had or observed in others—or heard from others. And, actually, if we write fiction, the scenes and ideas still flow from what we’ve seen, heard, tasted, smelled...from what we’ve experienced. Even mundane assignments start with our exposure to and understanding of the subject matter. To generate ideas, we have to live. To live well, we can make choices that take us places, switch things up, change our perspective, widen our lens.

[Ep 226] With my Back to Basics series, I'm providing tools you can apply to your next project in hopes it will make the writing process easier and the final product stronger than ever—so you can make an impact. Last time, we started by identifying a project's high-level elements—its Topic, Audience, Purpose, and Medium. After that, you can focus on the message of your project; that is, given your topic, what is this project’s IDEA. What do you write about​?Is itrunning, longevity, RV travel, cooking on a budget, stamp collecting, or social justice? Maybe you’re known for this topic and it’s your brand identity, or maybe you’ve been assigned this by an editor. Regardless, you start with a topic, but you don’t stop there. You have to hone in on an idea: a narrowed idea suitable for this particular project and this particular audience. Your finalized idea will reflect the slant or angle you’re taking that will provide focus and set your project apart from others tackling the same topic. It’s tempting to latch onto the first idea that pops into our heads—and sometimes those are indeed fresh and full of potential. Most of the time, though, if we want to write something that stands out, we’re better off taking time to send the idea through five phases: GenerateNarrowValidateRevise (adapt, adjust)Confirm or Finalize 1. Generate First, you’ll generate ideas. You’re about to hear lots of tips for generating ideas in this episode, and I’ll include links to a few other articles and resources. You can test them out and find what works best for you. 2. Narrow When you land on some ideas with potential, you’ll narrow them to suit your audience, purpose, and medium. You’ll also find your unique slant. 3. Validate When it seems your idea has potential, you’ll validate the idea, especially if you’re launching a big project like a book. But even when you’re planning an article or blog post, it’s smart to take a few steps to vet the idea, and I’ll explain that in another episode. 4. Revise After that process, you’ll adapt it based on the input you receive during the validation phase, revising and adjusting the idea as needed. 5. Confirm or Finalize The last phase will be to confirm your idea and finalize it so you can dig in and—finally!—write. A five-phase process just to lock in an idea may sound like overkill and it may seem like it’ll take ages, but you’ll breeze through it—especially for short projects. And it’s definitely worth it for longer projects because they’ll come together more efficiently when you walk through these phases. Let’s start with what it takes to generate ideas. Generate Ideas to Find What You Have to Say When we begin our search for writing ideas, we start with ourselves. What are you drawing from to produce your projects? What’s in you? What do you have to say? Generate Ideas by Remembering Our writing usually flows out of the person we are. The ideas we share are ideas inside us, so writing about our past and drawing from memories, we can pull up ideas that formed us, challenged us, confused us. Using those memories as the centerpiece of a project, we can dive in to explore the meaning, the truth, the lies, and the message locked in our past. These ideas flow from the richness of remembering. Generate Ideas by Living We continue to add to our memories by increasing experiences. So another way to generate ideas is by living. The stories we tell, if nonfiction, are experiences we’ve had or observed in others—or heard from others. And, actually, if we write fiction, the scenes and ideas still flow from what we’ve seen, heard, tasted, smelled...from what we’ve experienced. Even mundane assignments start with our exposure to and understanding of the subject matter. To generate ideas, we have to live. To live well, we can make choices that take us places, switch things up, change our perspective, widen our lens.

[Ep 225] You’re inspired. An idea seizes you and before the energy fizzles, you whip out a laptop, open a new document, and slam out words. Get it down fast—start writing and discover along the way what you want to say. I support this approach! Capture the core idea while your creativity sizzles—before your vision fades! At some point, however, you need to take a minute to be sure you know four key elements of this project or else your final product may miss the mark. For everything we write, we really do need to know: topic audience purpose medium Imagine if today’s article had been titled “Follow These 3 Rules to Organize and Optimize Your RV Kitchen.” You’d wonder if you clicked on the wrong link or cued up the wrong podcast. I do like RV travel and could probably write about it, but because this website provides writing input to readers, an RV article might suit the medium of a podcast that focused on RV owners, but it would not fit the topic, audience, or purpose of a writing coach podcast or website. Understand these fundamental elements of your project, and you’ll save time in the editing stage and ultimately impress publishers and serve readers. You'll build an audience that can tell you are knowledgeable and you understand them. Build This Step into Your Writing Process Experienced writers who publish regularly often work through this instinctively because they’ve written for years about a particular subject matter for an outlet that follows a specific format.These professionals may be able to sit down and tap out an impressive draft that follows style and formatting guidelines, and falls close to the ideal word count. But if you’re… new to writing returning to it after a long break craving a refresher on the basics concerned your work isn’t connecting with readers stepping out to write new subject matter, reach a new audience, or publish in a new media style or outlet …I recommend you build this step into your writing process more intentionally. Consciously, deliberately pause in the early stages of development to think through—even write out—brief descriptions of your project’s topic, audience, purpose, and medium. Know what you’re setting out to accomplish and why. Determine what you’re writing about and who it’s for. Consider where it’ll be published and distributed, because that affects its depth and design, tone and topic, length and layout. Lock this in before you brainstorm, research, outline, or free write and you’ll find the writing, revising, and editing process more efficient and the finished project’s impact more effective. Topic Let’s start with that initial inspiration. That creative spark. That idea. THE TOPIC QUESTION: What’s this project about? Sometimes you’re assigned a topic; other times the idea blooms from within. Either way, you’ll need to confirm the high-level topic and then articulate how this project will narrow and focus on a particular aspect of it. For example, your high-level topic may be vegetable gardening. Are you writing an article for a local garden shop’s newsletter about growing potatoes or how to plant a Three Sisters garden? That’s how you would narrow the high-level topic to be more focused. If you function as your own publisher, your “brand” may cover three or four categories that lead to obvious topic choices that always fit the audience, purpose, and medium. The food blogger writes about the high-level topic of food, but narrows it to a few categories like main dishes, side dishes, slow-cooker instructions. Then, she publishes specific articles and recipes under each of those. So any given project—in this case, it’s probably a blog post—will have a specific topic. And that’s what her project is about: it’s an eggplant recipe or instructions for cooking steel cut oats. You may find it helpful to express the big idea of this project in one-sentence, as you would a thesis. Or maybe writing the headline will help you answer the topic q...

[Ep 225] You’re inspired. An idea seizes you and before the energy fizzles, you whip out a laptop, open a new document, and slam out words. Get it down fast—start writing and discover along the way what you want to say. I support this approach! Capture the core idea while your creativity sizzles—before your vision fades! At some point, however, you need to take a minute to be sure you know four key elements of this project or else your final product may miss the mark. For everything we write, we really do need to know: topic audience purpose medium Imagine if today’s article had been titled “Follow These 3 Rules to Organize and Optimize Your RV Kitchen.” You’d wonder if you clicked on the wrong link or cued up the wrong podcast. I do like RV travel and could probably write about it, but because this website provides writing input to readers, an RV article might suit the medium of a podcast that focused on RV owners, but it would not fit the topic, audience, or purpose of a writing coach podcast or website. Understand these fundamental elements of your project, and you’ll save time in the editing stage and ultimately impress publishers and serve readers. You'll build an audience that can tell you are knowledgeable and you understand them. Build This Step into Your Writing Process Experienced writers who publish regularly often work through this instinctively because they’ve written for years about a particular subject matter for an outlet that follows a specific format.These professionals may be able to sit down and tap out an impressive draft that follows style and formatting guidelines, and falls close to the ideal word count. But if you’re… new to writing returning to it after a long break craving a refresher on the basics concerned your work isn’t connecting with readers stepping out to write new subject matter, reach a new audience, or publish in a new media style or outlet …I recommend you build this step into your writing process more intentionally. Consciously, deliberately pause in the early stages of development to think through—even write out—brief descriptions of your project’s topic, audience, purpose, and medium. Know what you’re setting out to accomplish and why. Determine what you’re writing about and who it’s for. Consider where it’ll be published and distributed, because that affects its depth and design, tone and topic, length and layout. Lock this in before you brainstorm, research, outline, or free write and you’ll find the writing, revising, and editing process more efficient and the finished project’s impact more effective. Topic Let’s start with that initial inspiration. That creative spark. That idea. THE TOPIC QUESTION: What’s this project about? Sometimes you’re assigned a topic; other times the idea blooms from within. Either way, you’ll need to confirm the high-level topic and then articulate how this project will narrow and focus on a particular aspect of it. For example, your high-level topic may be vegetable gardening. Are you writing an article for a local garden shop’s newsletter about growing potatoes or how to plant a Three Sisters garden? That’s how you would narrow the high-level topic to be more focused. If you function as your own publisher, your “brand” may cover three or four categories that lead to obvious topic choices that always fit the audience, purpose, and medium. The food blogger writes about the high-level topic of food, but narrows it to a few categories like main dishes, side dishes, slow-cooker instructions. Then, she publishes specific articles and recipes under each of those. So any given project—in this case, it’s probably a blog post—will have a specific topic. And that’s what her project is about: it’s an eggplant recipe or instructions for cooking steel cut oats. You may find it helpful to express the big idea of this project in one-sentence, as you would a thesis. Or maybe writing the headline will help you answer the topic q...